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Websleuths News

Join Websleuths Radio for the final discussion of THE KILLING SEASON
with Josh Zemam, Rachel Mills and special guests including Bob Kolker author of Lost Girls

OK - Chanda Turner, 23, Pauls Valley, 12 July 2000

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Recent happenings at the State Medical Examiner's Office are proving to be a nightmare for a Garvin County family.

Former Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Collie Trant was in the process of determining how Donna and Joe Turner's daughter died in 2000 when he was placed on suspension. Now after Trant was fired from the M.E.'s office Friday, the couple said they don't know if they'll ever get answers.

Twenty-three-year-old Chanda Turner was found shot to death in July of 2000 outside her home in Pauls Valley. At the time, her boyfriend was inside the home and said he never heard a gunshot. The death was ruled a suicide.

"There is no way it could have happened the way they said it did," Joe Turner said.

No autopsy was done, so last year the family had a medical examiner from Colorado look at the investigation reports and crime scene pictures. He told the Turners that in his 24 years of experience, he had never seen a case with as much alteration of a crime scene, and it was his opinion that their daughter's was most likely a homicide and certainly not a suicide.

The family's attorney said the evidence for a homicide is overwhelming.

"I think it is unconscionable that this family has had to go outside the state of Oklahoma to get a competent medical examiner to tell them what we all know," said Jaye Mendros, the Turner family's attorney.

Last December, Chanda's body was exhumed and Dr. Collie Trant did the autopsy while the Colorado doctor looked on. The Turners said Trant told them he would change the cause of death to homicide, but the paperwork was never done.

"All we want now is for the medical examiner to do their job, whoever's taking Dr. Trant's place, to do their job so we can move forward," Mendros said.

The ME's office said, despite what Dr. Trant may have told the family, no official ruling on the cause of death has been made. The case will now be turned over to Dr. Duvall to make that determination.

"We know our daughter did not commit suicide. Now we got physical evidence from the autopsy showing she didn't, and now we can't get a report from the M.E.'s office," said

The Garvin County District Attorney's office, said the Turners has asked the Grand Jury to investigate the case.

Amid the turmoil surrounding the position of the chief medical examiner, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner quietly slips into further disrepair.

A lack of space and outdated equipment in the 30-year-old building is causing most of the problems, spokeswoman Cherokee Ballard said. Some days — especially Mondays — the number of bodies coming into the office exceeds its storage space.

"It’s gotten to the point where they have to stack people on the floor. No one would like to see their loved one like that, but on a busy Monday, that’s what we have to do,” Ballard said. Autopsies are usually conducted on weekdays, but the office receives bodies 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Two tables in the autopsy room and some sinks and shelving in the toxicology laboratory are rusted. Tissue specimens are stored on racks in the building’s garage. Boxes of files top the full file cabinets lining the walls.

But files aren’t the only things the office is struggling to store. Eleven unidentified corpses were still in the freezers late last week, one of which has been there for six years, Ballard said.

"I talked to a woman today whose son died in June, and she still doesn’t have a death certificate,” Ballard said recently in her office, which is an old storage closet.

Some autopsies may take longer than others because certain test results take longer to get.

But the backlog is such that there are delays of more than a year in some cases, she said.

"We’re doing our best to keep going,” Ballard said.

So far, the Oklahoma City Police Department hasn’t been affected by the medical examiner’s backlog, Capt. Patrick Stewart said. The FBI’s Oklahoma City office declined comment on the issue while officials at the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation and the Oklahoma County District’s Attorney’s Office didn’t return phone calls seeking comment.

Agency ‘unacceptable’
Rep. Randy Terrill, R-Moore, chairman of the public safety and judiciary appropriations subcommittee, recently visited the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, 901 N Stonewall, with committee member Rep. Mike Christian, R-Oklahoma City. He said he was appalled at what he found.
"That situation is just absolutely unacceptable. What if that was your loved one? Would you really want them at the bottom of that pile? I think most people would find that objectionable,” Terrill said.

"For the longest time, you had Dr. Fred Jordan down there who ran a tight ship. Upon the departure of Dr. Jordan — and I’m not pinning it on one particular person — but things began to slip and slide downhill to the point where now to the independent outside view, it looks like it’s on the brink of cratering,” he said.

Terrill proposes that the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner be moved to the University of Central Oklahoma campus, where the agency can lease a facility built to specification but also maintain its autonomy. This contrasts with a previous push by some to make the agency part of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation.

"That would create a very unique, one-of-a-kind synergy that cannot be found in any other state in the nation. It would be something for which Oklahoma would become known in a positive way, instead of a negative one,” he said.

But until that facility can be built, Terrill is proposing some funds be made available to hire more employees.

"There is an acute pathologist shortage. We were already two pathologists down at the M.E., and with Dr. (Collie M.) Trant gone, we are now short two in Oklahoma City and one in Tulsa. What that inevitably is going to mean is that the backlog is going to get worse unless immediate financial resources are brought to bear on the situation,” he said.

Trant, the state’s former chief medical examiner, was fired Feb. 5 by the board that oversees the medical examiner’s office.

Ballard also said a temporary worker hired to help with the paperwork backlog had to be let go because there wasn’t enough money to pay him.

"All these various agencies have been taking across-the-board cuts for quite some time. I don’t know how much more substantial of a cut that it is that they (the medical examiner) can take,” Terrill said.

"The vast majority of the people I met down there are doing their daily job to the best of their ability. Doing a job that not a lot of other people want or are willing to do and under some very difficult circumstances. I think we owe it to them, and to those folks that have lost a loved one,” Terrill said.

Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth. Buddha

Posts

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TONIGHT ON INTIMATE PARTNER HOMICIDE INVESTIGATION; JOIN SUSAN MURPHY-MILANO, SHERYL McCOLLUM, AND HOLLY HUGHES AS THEY DISCUSS THE SHOCKING CASE OF CHANDA TURNER. WAS IS MURDER OR SUICIDE ? YOU’LL BE SHOCKED AT THE NEGLIGENCE IN THIS CASE.

ALSO TONIGHT IPHI RADIO WILL FOCUS ON THE DISAPPEARANCE 26 YEARS AGO OF MARY BADARACCO

I just figured out today that I know this family. Just mind blowing that I know two victims families who are both being treated so unfairly by the same system! I am so incredibly sad and mad that this has been allowed to happen! I am not sure that any links will say but this being covered up because her boyfriend (who was at the scene of her "suicide") is the step-son of a lawyer in Pauls Valley.

Justice for Sheila Deviney, Chandra Turner and Tom Horton, the Garvin County 3!!!!

there have been huge problems in okla law enforcement for years. they are decades behind in technology, they still subscribe to the good old boys rule book which says, status is more important than substance and enough powerful contacts will get you out of anything. that is the norm in law enforcement all over oklahoma. this is such a horrific situation for the turners to have to live through. for the system to add ugly insult to gut wrenching injury in this family is inexcusable.

This is in excellent investigative series on how suspicious deaths are handled in our country. Sometimes the coroner is the Postman/school bus driver/coroner, and has no medical training whatsoever. A must read for anyone who follows crime cases.

My heart goes out to the parents of the young woman.
There seems to have been multiple mistakes in the ME's office-I wonder if the examiner has been investigated for wrong doing. I see he has been dismissed but there was not a reason.
I hope they are able to get this straightened out.

This is in excellent investigative series on how suspicious deaths are handled in our country. Sometimes the coroner is the Postman/school bus driver/coroner, and has no medical training whatsoever. A must read for anyone who follows crime cases.

I have read hundreds of cases where the M.D. makes false findings. Many cases stay cold because of these mistakes. I hope these parents find closure soon. At least they took precautions to protect their daughter until the case can be looked into more deeply. The people who don't have the money stay in a limbo forever at times. Usually the parents are aware of their daughter or son suffering from depression.

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